This disclosure is related to the following U.S. patent application filed on the same date as this application, owned by the assignee of this application, and the entirety of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. patent application entitled xe2x80x9cThermal Printed Mechanismxe2x80x9d, naming Gregory C. Yehl and Michael Scott Adams as inventors.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the field of printing systems. More specifically, this invention pertains to the field of media cartridges for printers, such as label roll printers.
2. Background of the Invention
Label roll printers are utilized in order to create customized labels for home or office purposes. Thus, the growing demand for customized labels in recent years has increased the use of these printers. Typically, label roll printer systems have been comprised of a media cartridge and a printing machine. The media cartridge may contain a media source, such as a roll of labels, and some sort of a media support assembly. The printing machine is often comprised of a housing, a processing unit with an operating system, and a printing mechanism.
There have been some enhancements made in the prior art on this standard printer design. Prior art designs of media cartridges have included memory chips with custom interfacing contacts, and an electronic connection to their printing machines. The memory chips contain data about the type of media source that is contained within their media cartridges, and this data is sent electronically to the corresponding printing machines. The printing systems of the prior art that use such memory chips, however, have several drawbacks. First, the cost of such memory chips is often very high, greatly increasing the price of their corresponding media cartridges. Also, memory chips are often susceptible to electrostatic discharge. Thus, other appliances near the printers that create electrostatic discharge, or common everyday static electricity, may permanently damage the memory chips and render them useless. In addition, the use of solder joints in many memory chips also makes them susceptible to failure due to faulty solder connections.
Instead of memory chips, other prior art printer system designs have used features that activate mechanical switches on their media cartridges to encode the types of media sources that are used. These prior art media cartridges using mechanical switches are also plagued by a variety of problems. First, mechanical switches are often very expensive and require custom fittings and housings. Therefore, the use of mechanical switches may significantly increase the cost of the printing system, and make it less appealing to consumers. Second, as products age, their mechanical moving parts are often susceptible to failure due to wear and tear. Thus, the mechanical switches utilized with these media cartridges are likely to fail as time passes. Finally, prior art designs have only been able to utilize a few mechanical switches per media cartridge. Since the amount of data mechanical switches can encode is proportional to the number of switches present, these media cartridge designs can only encode a very limited amount of data. Therefore, the mechanical switches may only enable the printing machine to distinguish between a few media types.
Another disadvantage common to most of the prior art printing systems is that their printing machines are unable to recognize individual media cartridges. In other words, although these prior art printing systems enable their printing machines to recognize a number of different types of media cartridges as explained above, most do not create an individual identification parameter, such as a serial number, for identifying each media cartridge regardless of its media type.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a media cartridge (e.g., label roll) for printing systems (e.g., label roll printers) that overcomes the above deficiencies associated with the prior art.
The present invention is a printing system comprising of a media cartridge and a printing machine. The media cartridge is preferably comprised of a media source and a printed circuit board having a plurality of conductive traces with fusible links that form a circuit pattern. The fusible links encode information about the media cartridge. The fusible links may encode a media type number that contains information about the type of media source used in the media cartridge. In addition, or alternatively, the fusible links may encode a serial number specific to the media cartridge that enables it to be individually identified by the printing machine.
The printing machine is preferably comprised of a housing, a processing unit and a printing mechanism connected to the housing, a media cartridge interface connecting the printing machine to the media cartridge, and a look-up table. The look-up table may be comprised of the media type number for each media cartridge that has been attached to the printing machine. In addition, or alternatively, the look-up table may be comprised of the individual serial numbers for each of these media cartridges. The look-up table may also keep track of the amount of media used within individual media cartridges. Also, the look-up table may keep track of user settings associated with an individual media cartridge.